


don't call it theft; call it saving the future

by ninemoons42



Series: Padmé Lives to Tell the Tale [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Women, Gen, Heist, Luke and Leia are precious and precocious, Mission Fic, Padmé Amidala Lives, Post-Mission, Women Being Awesome, even though they don't appear in the first chapter, let's go steal ourselves a Star Destroyer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 13:00:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6855730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Queen, Senator, runaway, rebel -- and now Padmé adds to her list of titles by proposing to become a thief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Flickering blue light on a welter of hacked-together comms arrays. The smell of sweat and fear. Lines in faces, only some of them virtual -- only some of them caused by long-distance transmission. 

A delicate rustle of movement. An intricately brocaded blue-black gown and a matching shawl. Queen Breha Organa in one of the blue-lit images, the serene facade broken for once in favor of a quietly grim determination. “I see now where all of this has been going. The rumors of conscription -- they’ve been circulating for years. The Imperial Academy has announced plans to expand. This cannot be a coincidence.”

“The resource levies, as well,” Mon Mothma added. 

Padmé looked closely at the other woman’s image. Hands demurely in her lap but folded tightly together. She’d once relied on the armrests of the throne back in Theed for that same subtle support, that same subtle reassurance. Presence of mind and the quiet pain of pressing her fingertips into some unyielding surface, to keep herself centered, to remind herself to remain calm. 

Someone glided into the background of Mon Mothma’s image and raised a hand, and Padmé nodded, acknowledging the presence of a dear friend. 

For Sabé to appear more or less openly in support of Mon Mothma, and dressed as she was to boot in a flight suit, meant things were looking grave indeed. 

“My operatives and I have been very quietly compiling the data on the exact types of resources that Coruscant is demanding from planets all over the galaxy. Emerging patterns, unmistakable trends: the Empire is focusing an immense amount of time and materiel into these -- these new ships.” Padmé watched as Mon Mothma glanced at a data pad. “Perhaps it might have gone unnoticed for a short time had there been only one order, for one ship -- a prototype of some kind. But that is not the case. It’s becoming clearer with each passing hour: the Empire is devoting at least half of its resources to this new fleet that it has planned.”

“I can’t believe this.” A quiet voice full of dread. A voice that made Padmé ache, made her want to reach out to the speaker.

But Ahsoka Tano was not in evidence, or at least her image was not visible in the room: all they could hear were her words. 

“Fifty thousand beings to crew one Star Destroyer. Fifty thousand beings including a legion of stormtroopers. Nine thousand officers and three times that number of enlisted. The _size_ of that crew complement alone -- and droids to help out -- how can anyone believe that one of these ships could be used for peacekeeping? These things are weapons of war.”

“Agreed.” From his grainy background and the occasional shiver in his image, it looked like Bail Organa was in transit. “I don’t honestly know who the Empire thinks it might be fooling, now that they’re going to be building these things.”

“There are billions upon billions of beings in this galaxy.” 

Padmé glanced over her shoulder at the speaker: none other than Jyn Erso, who was slouched down in one of the few seats that the room had to offer. Bandages covered the latest collection of injuries from when she’d set out alone to intercept another bundle of documents headed for the Kuat Drive Yards. “Is it so hard to think,” she said, wincing as she shifted her sprained foot, “that there might be sentients who don’t want to think about the Empire going to war against its own? They’re afraid and they just want to go on living their lives, they want to pretend that nothing’s happening, because that might mean that nothing _will_ happen to them and to theirs.”

“I have to admit that I cannot believe,” Breha said, quietly. “The sheer size of a single Star Destroyer -- the size of just _one_ crew -- it seems unimaginable.”

“Clearly the Emperor has seen fit to imagine it,” murmured a voice on Padmé’s left.

“Speak to us, General,” Mon Mothma said.

“It’s hardly the first war I’ve ever had the, ah, distinct _displeasure_ of being in,” Obi-Wan Kenobi said as he rose to his feet. “But may I remind my distinguished audience that last time we all thought that we were on the ‘right’ side. This time it will be different.”

“This time we’d be no more than a single blackfly on a rancor’s hide,” Padmé heard Ahsoka say.

“You can’t already be giving up,” Dormé said, and Padmé was grateful that she was standing nearby.

“I don’t intend to -- I’ll fight to my very last breath,” was Ahsoka’s reply. “On the other hand, we’d do better in a fight if we had _something_ to throw at those things.”

Padmé glanced at Jyn, who shook her head.

In the corner of the room that they had chosen to occupy, neither Jii-dan nor Sixth looked up from their objects of contemplation: a staff and a disassembled pistol, respectively.

They had nothing left to lose.

It was up to Padmé herself.

“I’m willing to take suggestions as to that,” she said, projecting confidence into her voice, though she didn’t feel all of it. “Clearly the Empire is readying its weapons of war. Do we have anything of our own?”

“We still have some back-channels into CEC,” Bail said, after a moment. “I believe it would be to our advantage to have a small group of fast, reliable, maneuverable freighters -- and if we had those, our friends on Sullust and elsewhere would be at liberty to provide some upgrades to their weapons systems.”

“Perhaps a word to the Mon Calamari might be in order, as well,” Mon Mothma said. “The word is that they have been designing some capital ships of their own -- but nothing as big as these Star Destroyers.”

“They have been -- ah -- delayed in making a decision with regards to our alliance,” Breha said. “This might be the push that would propel them to one side or another. I will do what I can to convince them to join our cause.”

“I also have a plan,” Padmé said. “But it’s a very risky one. And I have it on the record that several of my friends think it an _insane_ plan.”

“Oh no,” Kenobi said, faintly.

“This is a desperate juncture we find ourselves at, and we truly need to consider even the insane plans,” Mon Mothma said. “Speak to us, Padmé.”

She met Dormé’s eyes. Kenobi’s and Jyn’s. 

Had they been in this room to join the discussion, she would have taken her children’s hands -- but they were busy steering _White Base_ , and in any event she knew she had their support, as well as a few unusual ideas.

“At this point I’m willing to consider anything and everything, and I’m willing to risk -- well, a great deal, in this case, including my life.” Padmé rose, and straightened her shoulders, and addressed the others in the clarion voice of old. “I propose that we steal ourselves a Star Destroyer.”

Absolute silence for a moment, and then:

“I have one question for you, Padmé: _how?_ ” And there was worry on Breha’s face, worry that now warred with her determination.

“I must admit that I haven’t thought that far,” and she knew she wasn’t imagining the dismay that now appeared in Bail’s eyes. “But fortunately my children have.”

“The children!” Breha said, shocked. “How could you have enlisted them?”

“Because there was no way of stopping them from joining the fight,” Padmé said.

“General Kenobi, we hoped you would be a -- perhaps some kind of moderating influence.”

Dormé snorted, quietly, but enough to make Padmé want to smile. “ _Moderating influence?_ Are you sure you’re talking about the same Kenobi?”

A quiet, voice-only snicker on one of the comm lines.

Kenobi, for his own part, merely sighed and tutted in Ahsoka’s general direction. “Call it self-defense, or give me some credit: at least now I know better when I’m faced with one or more extremely headstrong and also extremely talented padawans.”

“Which is -- what exactly?” Ahsoka asked. “Get out of the way?”

“I don’t have that luxury right now. So I’m strapping in for the ride.”

“I could certainly use your help,” Padmé murmured, then. “I would feel better if I had Fulcrum at my back.”

“I was going to head out to Jakku for a pickup -- I’ll just have to reschedule it,” was Ahsoka’s reply. “And if you can wait for me, I’ll bring a friend along -- you might just need a pilot.”

“Always,” Padmé said. “Be safe and come back as soon as you can.”

“I’ll jump for hyperspace as soon as my nav computer can set up for the next set of coordinates.” There was a quiet _click_ , and then the blue light that signaled Ahsoka’s active connection winked out.

“Then it appears you’re bent on this plan of yours,” Bail said, and he sounded resigned. “So I’ll repeat my wife’s question. How are you planning to accomplish this?”

Padmé straightened her shoulders again -- and this time she put her hands behind her back so the others wouldn’t see her nervousness. “It would be logistically impossible to build an entire fleet of Star Destroyers all at once in the Kuat shipyards -- there wouldn’t be enough space, there wouldn’t be enough beings or droids to do the work. Furthermore, it doesn’t make sense for the Empire to have already accumulated enough materiel to build more than three or four of these immense ships at the same time.”

“Go on,” Mon Mothma said.

“Let us conjecture: three or four Star Destroyers in progress at the Kuat Drive Yards,” Padmé said, and she tapped her toes silently inside her boots, because there was no room for her to pace inside the cramped room. “We propose to infiltrate one of the ships under construction. We plan to evaluate its systems: most important of all, propulsion and navigation.”

“You expect these ships to be halfway to operational?”

Padmé shook her head. “That’s why we want to evaluate them -- and we plan to steal the one that’s closest to leaving the dock.” She glanced at the door, and thought of her children at the controls of _White Base_. “Luke has been studying slave circuits -- ”

“He thinks he can create a slave circuit, or a series of slave circuits, large enough to bring a Star Destroyer under his control?” Breha said. “He certainly has ambition.”

“And I won’t get in his way, or in his sister’s.” Padmé smiled with pride. “Leia plans to talk some of the crew into going with us. Or if she feels that they’re not trustworthy enough, then some of the droids. There certainly aren’t enough of us here to steer the whole blasted thing on our own, not even if Ahsoka brought us an entire squad of pilots.”

“Audacity and luck, that is all we have to rely on now,” Mon Mothma murmured. “What assistance and resources we can provide to you in this short period of time, ask for it and we shall provide.”

“Thank you,” Padmé said, quietly.

She glanced at Dormé, and at Kenobi, and at Jyn.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They revealed the official names of the Rogue One squaddies, but I’ve gotten attached to my characters, and it’s an AU anyway, so just to show who’s who:
> 
> Donnie Yen’s character is officially named _Chirrut_ but in this ’verse he’s _Jii-dan_.
> 
> Jiang Wen’s character is officially named _Baze_ but in this ’verse he’s _Sixth_.

She could hear, reverberating in the spaces of her chest and the spaces between her skin and the suit she was wearing, the worried rise and fall of her own breaths.

Tiles and gantries and ventilation shafts beneath her feet, and she could stand, just, but she was also still tethered to a droid at the far end of the corridor, construction tools in its many hands and an infallible monotone patience clinging to its movements.

Any moment now, she’d need to watch her step, because parts of this section were still open to space, to construction docks, to the stars that hung in the skies over the planet of Kuat. 

This section of an immense spaceship: it had its engines and it had some of its computer systems and it had little to no actual life-support. 

She could hear her own breaths -- and over them, over the cadence that she was fighting to control because this was no time to fall apart with worries and fear -- she could hear droid-voices screaming, and ugly hard words in several languages, and she could hear the whining cry of shots fired.

And over those terrible noises, a familiar voice.

Her daughter’s voice.

Padmé flinched and looked anxiously around. The droid that she was tethered to kept trundling down the corridor, slowly laying down several types of cables. Placid movements. It was not disturbed by the sounds of a fight that were happening somewhere else on the ship.

Such an immense ship that Padmé knew she was nowhere near Leia’s location. That it would take her the better part of an hour just to get _near_ the section that Leia was supposed to be in.

Not for the first time, Padmé cursed the size of the ship and cursed the Empire that was building it. The instructions that were filtered down to these droids: _Lay these cables. Check the life-support systems. Build the nav computers. Paint the outsides. Test the weapons systems --_

Clicks in her ear. Commlinks coming to life. 

“ -- good shot, there’s another one coming up behind that next droid -- ”

“ -- I see him, keep talking, I need to know where to shoot next -- ”

“ -- why aren’t we just blowing this section open to vacuum again?”

“We need this ship intact.” That was Leia. There was such confidence in her young voice. “Or as intact as we can get it.”

“That is a debatable concept,” and the last syllable was drowned out in a rifle-blast cry. “It will take some time yet before we can move around in this immense vessel without these blasted unwieldy suits.”

A grunt, and: “Suits, yes. An operational karking Star Destroyer, _no_.”

“See, Jii-dan, Sixth agrees with me,” Leia said, in Padmé’s ear.

While Padmé herself clutched at the tools that she was pretending to use in the wake of the cable-laying droid, and fought every instinct that she had to go to her daughter -- that same daughter was calling, “Give me that blaster!”

Calm. She needed calm. Padmé thought of a teacup in the smallest galley, thought of the faint curls of steam that rose into the worry-charged atmosphere that crawled into all of the corners of _White Base_ , and she thought of a workbench with neat rows of tools and painstakingly-made circuit boards, and she thought of the simple soothing repetition of a brush stroking through long dark hair.

Now her breaths came more steadily, and now she could hurry to catch up with the droid as it began the slow and lugubrious turn into the next set of corridors. Eyes on the cables as they were laid out, remembering what each bundle did, and where the weak points were.

Faint starlight filtering in from a long stretch of yawning windows still missing their transparisteel panes, and there were shadows shifting ahead from another series of joining corridors, and she reached for the blaster that was holstered very near the small of her back -- 

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” and the young man in the bright green suit held up his hands. “It’s me. Wedge Antilles.”

Padmé took a deep breath and tried to find that elusive calm again, and instead of firing her blaster she handed it over to him, holster and all. “Ahsoka?”

“You mean Fulcrum?” was the young man’s answering question. 

She nodded. 

“Safe. I left her near one of the hangar bays.” The young man seemed to frown. “I was hoping there was a shuttle in there or something, we could have used it.”

“And where would you have learned how to pilot an Imperial shuttle?”

“I can fly freighters, I can fly starfighters -- I can fly anything short of this actual monster,” was the young man’s reply. “You can ask Fulcrum -- I mean, Ahsoka. Now I’m confused, I don’t know how to refer to her.”

“I suppose you can use either of those names, as she’ll answer to them both. Just be careful of who might be listening. All right, Antilles?”

“You can call me Wedge, ma’am,” was the reply, as the young man expertly checked the blaster over and then attached it to the hip belts on his suit.

Instead of replying, Padmé motioned him forward. “We’re still following that droid. Those cables are starting to look a little played out.”

“You’re looking for a terminal,” was Wedge’s reply, and she nodded. “Then let me go ahead and scout for you.”

“Thank you,” Padmé murmured.

A new set of voices crackling in her ear, as she watched Wedge take off from one of the tilted walls and maneuver his way along her own tethering cord. 

“We’re in position near one of the main nav computer bays.” A quiet authoritative voice in her ear, the voice of a trusted friend. She envied Dormé that seemingly endless quiet strength. “Defensible positions first before you plug in.”

“Copy that.”

Padmé couldn’t help but smile, and she couldn’t help but be afraid: for that gently eager voice was the voice of her Luke, the voice of her son, and the success of this mad plan lay mainly in his welding-burned hands.

“Padmé, I can hear you getting worried from here,” and she blinked and frowned at her own shadow as she crossed another gap in the incomplete superstructure. “Take a deep breath. We’re safe for now.”

“Which only means, you’re going to worry and I’m going to get right on with the mission,” she murmured into her commlink.

On the other side of the connection there was a wry, weary laugh. “I suppose you’ve come to know me quite well.”

“We’ve only been doing this for a long time, my dear General,” she said.

“And long may we both continue to do this. I have to admit, however, this is thirsty work. I don’t suppose that we can justify breaking into some of our more, ahem, prized supplies when we get back?”

“We have to get back first,” was Dormé’s retort. And: “Get back in here, General, your apprentice is starting to get that glazed look in his eyes again.”

“Luke,” Padmé murmured, still trying to smile.

“I’m fine, Mama, and so is Leia -- I can feel her now. Faintly. She’s still very far away from me, isn’t she?”

“As far as I know, you’re on opposite ends of the ship.”

“This ship is _so large_ , I have to tell myself Leia and I are still over the same planet.”

Padmé looked around her at the exposed struts of the Star Destroyer, and tried to suppress a shiver. “And so is your Mama. I do not like this hideous thing at all.”

“Then let’s do something about it,” Luke said, and then she could hear him tinkering with his tools.

Padmé turned the next corner and caught sight of Wedge beckoning her forward, and she hurried to catch up with him. “News?” she asked as they ducked behind a heap of parts. 

“The droid’s stopped,” he said.

“I see.” And she stepped into the open. She could just about walk upright instead of float, if she hugged the wall of the passage. The droid was clicking mournfully to itself as it stopped within a squared-off group of blocky shapes, as it made minute adjustments to several panels. Then it pulled an access hatch away, and Padmé nodded at what was beneath: attachments for several different kinds of cables. 

She glanced at Wedge, and tilted her head in the direction of the droid.

“Got it,” he said, quietly, and she hung back, watching as he soundlessly drew her pistol and shot the droid -- they had identified the locations of the thing’s processing units early on in their infiltration of the Star Destroyer -- and now she watched as the droid collapsed into smoking sparking silence.

She moved forward and nodded as she recognized the configuration of cable attachments within the blocks. “I’ve seen this pattern before,” she murmured, both to Wedge and to the others on the commlinks. “I think we might be getting closer to one of the command clusters, however.”

“Copy that,” Luke said. “If you get to one today, I can try to strike out to meet you -- I haven’t encountered one of those yet, and we may need to reconfigure the boards.”

“You’re _not_ at a command cluster?” was Leia’s slightly surprised and slightly winded-sounding question. 

“No. Navigations only, and it looks like some of these computers are actually slaved already, now I just have to figure out what to -- ”

“Oh,” Padmé heard Leia say. “You’re having fun.”

She could almost _hear_ her son rolling his eyes; she could hear the gentle needling in his voice. “And how many droids have you killed already?”

“Just a fluke,” was the airy response. 

“At least they’re not losing sight of the mission objectives,” Dormé noted.

“Ah, the flexibility of youth,” Kenobi murmured.

Padmé felt her heart lighten, just a little. “Let me finish slaving this section and the next, and we’ll do a sitrep,” she said to all of the others. “Luke, check your work; Leia, _please_ make sure we get Jii-dan and Sixth back in one piece each. Anyone have any word on Jyn or Ahsoka?”

“It’s entirely likely we sent them into the parts of this behemoth where we can’t actually communicate with them,” and there was a sigh that Padmé couldn’t read. Some things were easier to understand than others, and that included the way Kenobi looked at Ahsoka. There was no question that they saw each other as equals, there was no question that they gave and took orders from each other as easily as they fought side-by-side, and yet sometimes Padmé wondered how they could agree or disagree on the matter of -- 

Klaxons, and Padmé froze.

“Somebody please tell me where the problem is,” Kenobi said, and she heard the underlying uncertainty of him -- 

“Shuttle bay,” she heard Leia say, very softly. “We’re near one of the shuttle bays, we have incoming -- ”

“I could use a shuttle,” Wedge muttered.

“Not before we find out who brought this one,” Padmé said. 

“I know who.” 

A new voice on the comms.

“Are you safe?” “Ahsoka! Where are you!” “Come to us, we’re closest to you -- ”

“No,” and now Ahsoka’s voice was tired and resigned and full of power. “No running from this one, or she’ll carry news of us all the way to places who should not know what we’re doing. You maybe’ve seen this one before, Obi-Wan: she’s no more than a girl, she’s only a little older than the twins, but she’s a student of the Emperor himself.”

“An Emperor’s Hand.” 

He sounded weary and unsurprised, and Padmé felt her eyes widen at the idea.

“I’d heard they existed -- I didn’t think I’d be running into one.”

“We’re going to have to deal with her,” Ahsoka said. “The rest of you get ready to run.”

“Let’s go, Wedge,” Padmé hissed, and she desperately needed to hurry, desperately needed to reach her children -- 

“I can help.” 

“Leia,” she heard Luke say, in warning.

“Padawan, I don’t advise revealing that skill of yours -- ”

“Skill?” Padmé frowned, though Kenobi was nowhere in sight. “That -- that thing you’ve been working on?”

“This is the right time to use it. You and Ahsoka will have your hands full in this fight. I can give you the edge.”

“Somebody tell me what she’s talking about,” Ahsoka warned, “and tell me quickly.”

“It was a rare skill -- only a handful of Knights and Masters had it -- it’s called battle meditation, and Leia has that skill, as strongly as I’ve ever known or heard tell of it.”

“Wait for me,” Padmé growled.

“Mama -- ” Leia said.

“I didn’t say _don’t do it_ , I said _wait for me_.”


	3. Chapter 3

She was winded, she was breathing heavily, she was swearing in all the languages she knew, and still Padmé hurtled down the built and unbuilt corridors of the fledgling Star Destroyer, and she could have been cut down at any intersection but for two things: Wedge Antilles running interference ahead of her, and the thought of her daughter.

And the thought of her son, as well, who was calling instructions into the comm: “-- swing right and there’s a group of broken panels in the ceiling several meters down -- do you have enough momentum to jump for it?”

“I’ll make it,” Padmé growled, and watched as Wedge crouched near another set of intersecting corridors and watched in all directions before waving a fist to motion her forward. 

Here was the corner that Luke had mentioned and there were the broken panels -- Padmé crouched and then leaped for the ceiling, and only the shifting gravity gave her the advantage -- scrabbling for the jagged edges and grateful for the gloves on her suit -- she flattened herself to the wall to let Wedge pass her again and yelled into her commlink: “Leia, I’m two floors down from you -- everyone else, where are you!”

“I’m almost at Ahsoka’s position.” Kenobi.

“Luke and I are almost finished with this and we’ve got a flag on a command cluster.” Dormé. 

“Obi-Wan, hurry!” Ahsoka.

“Mama,” and that was Leia on the circuit. “We’re moving to someplace a little quieter. Take a left turn at the next intersection and come three floors up -- then look for Sixth.”

“Copy,” Padmé said, and all her breath went into covering the remaining distance. She passed a winded Wedge, skidded around another sudden turn in the twisting corridors, and suddenly caught sight of Sixth’s arsenal, methodically laid out within easy pick-up-and-fire distance.

“My daughter,” she said, breathless, as she slid to a long halt.

“Third door,” was Sixth’s reply.

“Are you going to need me here?” Wedge asked, suddenly. “Since he’s got all those guns. I can go and help your companions.”

“Anyone need any help,” Padmé asked on the comms.

“We might need another pair of hands,” Dormé replied.

“Give Wedge your position -- and Wedge,” Padmé added.

“Yes?” the young man asked.

“That is my son you’ll be protecting.”

“I read you loud and clear,” was the reply -- and she didn’t wait to watch him leave. Third door down the corridor and -- she stopped, disoriented.

Dormant monitors, half-built consoles, and several visible struts in the distant corner of what looked like a miniature bridge. “What is this place?” Her voice echoed, softly, on the comms and inside her helmet.

“It looks like the beginnings of a command room,” was the reply. Jii-dan’s voice was just as slightly distorted as hers was. 

“Take me to my daughter, please.”

Wordlessly he pointed her in the direction of a stack of crates. A sheltered recess and one of Padmé’s own pistols, something she’d carried with her across the stars from an armory on distant Naboo. She was more than familiar with its chrome and the grooves she’d worn into it -- but it looked strange and gleaming and deadly, wrapped up in its holster and belt next to Leia’s hip.

Leia, who was seated cross-legged on the crates. 

As Padmé drew a deep breath the shadows seemed to shift across her daughter’s face, cutting terrible lines into her round cheeks and chapped lips -- but then Leia smiled, and said “Mama,” and opened her eyes.

Gravity drew her inexorably to her daughter’s side and she murmured, “Is it all right for Mama to sit with you?”

“I want to sit in your lap, please,” was Leia’s reply.

And Leia was now a little too old, a little too tall, for them to manage this with any degree of comfort -- but that was how Padmé found herself sitting cross-legged atop the cold crates. Leia in her lap, vital and warm and quietly breathing. A slow hypnotic rhythm.

“I want to help,” she heard Leia say, a bare whisper. “I have the ability.”

“Tell me about battle meditation,” Padmé said with her heart in her throat. 

Her daughter, here and now, more than a padawan: Leia was a soldier, had made the decision to be a soldier, and at an even younger age than Padmé herself. The Queen of Naboo had been more or less _conscripted_ into the conflict that gave birth to the Galactic Empire, fighting beside the likes of the Jedi, fighting beside clones and friends and allies. Leia, on the other hand: Padmé looked at the back of her daughter’s head and tried, tried very hard, to erase the image in her mind of a towheaded little boy with hair the color of desert sands at noon, a boy in a podracer -- 

“Mama,” Leia said, again, and suddenly Padmé found that she could draw a deep breath, a clean breath, a needed breath. 

“Are you doing this?” she murmured, wondering.

Leia nodded. “What I can do is -- I can reach out to the minds I’m familiar with, and I can help them to focus. Help them to see more clearly. I can _try_ to make them believe that they can win. That they can do what they need to do.”

“Nothing like twisting the world or destroying minds.” Kenobi, too, sounded calm and alert. “She can give us clarity when we can’t reach for it ourselves, or find it difficult to do so. Those of us who are fighting and those of us who are not. With more time, and more training, she can learn to confound her opponents’ minds while she bolsters her allies.”

“I can -- Leia, I can feel that,” a quietly awed-sounding Ahsoka said. 

“Are you already engaging?” Padmé asked.

“Obi-Wan’s almost here. I’m not fighting this Emperor’s Hand by myself.”

“Good call,” was Kenobi’s reply.

Padmé tuned them out as they began to talk tactics.

She put her arms around her daughter, and held her close.

Already a feeling of cool certainty was washing through her. Victory, tingling in her fingertips. The steady unshakeable knowledge of knowing exactly what to do and when to do it. Fear, banished to the very corners of her mind where it would not grow and take root -- 

This was Leia, this was her daughter, and Padmé had carried this powerful heart and mind within her own body. Padmé had cradled Leia in her arms, had soothed her to sleep through colic and nightmares and the insistent pain of teething. Padmé had brushed Leia’s hair when she wore it long, and washed it when she wore it short. Padmé had taught Leia how to eat and how to hold a blaster and how to fly _White Base_. This was Leia, powerful, and Padmé held her -- 

“It’s like you’re holding me, too, Mama,” she heard Luke say. 

“Tell me,” Padmé said.

“You’re holding Leia, and we’re connected to each other, so I don’t have to feel jealous. I can feel your arms around me. I can hear your heartbeat.”

“And this ship? Tell me what you feel of it.”

A sigh. “I wish it made me happy. I know it’s a weapon, so I feel like I should be destroying its systems.”

“It might still come to that,” she warned her son.

“I know.” A pause, and then: “Ahsoka, watch your back!”

“They’re engaging,” Leia murmured, and Padmé drew a deep breath. “She’s -- she’s young. But she’s really good -- ”

“Tell me about her,” Padmé said.

“Red hair. I didn’t know a lightsaber could have a differently-colored blade. I wonder where her crystal came from.” There were long pauses between the sentences. “I don’t recognize the style she’s using.”

“We’ll have to ask your Master later on.”

“She can’t get through his defenses,” Leia added after a moment.

“She’s patient,” Luke said.

“So is he.”

Leia’s hands seeking hers, and Padmé gladly let her hold on.

Suddenly, on the comms: “I need help!”

“Wedge,” Padmé said, as calmly as she could despite the surprise that fired up her tense nerves. “Tell us what you need.”

“I found this girl, she says she’s with you, she’s looking for the big guy with all the guns!” 

“Jyn,” Padmé said, shocked. “Is she all right?”

“Looks like she took a nasty fall. Conscious, but just barely. Could be concussed at the very least.”

Movement in the nearby shadows. “Sixth must stay here to watch over you,” Jii-dan said, quiet and decisive. “I will go and assist Jyn.” 

“Alone?” Padmé asked.

“As there is no one else to send with me, yes. I would have appreciated the backup.”

“Would that I had someone to send with you. But we’re all a little preoccupied,” Padmé said.

“I will trust my instincts and our comrade Wedge,” was Jii-dan’s reply.

“Ask Sixth to come in,” Leia said. “He’ll have plenty of cover in here.”

“My thoughts exactly. I will see you soon,” and Padmé nodded as Jii-dan hurried off.

She murmured into her commlink again. “Wedge, I’ve sent someone to find you.” A quick description of Jii-dan.

“He’d better hurry,” was the clipped response.

“I can direct him to you,” Leia murmured.

“Not Force-sensitive,” Wedge warned.

“It works on sentients.”

A crash and a cry and the tell-tale noises of clashing lightsabers, and Padmé wondered how Ahsoka and Kenobi were doing, and then: “Look out!”

“I see it, I see it -- ”

“Wait for it, wait for it,” and Leia was chanting, was shivering, was holding on to Padmé with clenched hands. “You need more time, you have to flank her -- wait, wait, _now!_ ”

“Good work, padawan.” Kenobi was breathing hard.

“Options?” Burrs on the edges of the single word, and Padmé hoped that Ahsoka was still fighting unscathed. 

“Put her to sleep.”

“Already tried.”

“That was only one of you,” Leia suddenly said. “If it was all of us all together -- ”

“That -- that’s crazy enough to work,” Padmé heard Kenobi say. 

“That means time for me to do something,” Ahsoka said.

“That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to -- oh, no, you’re actually going to try punching her in the nose.”

“Sleep, sleep, sleep now,” Leia chanted, and Padmé could hear Luke’s voice like an echo on the commlinks, only half a beat behind his twin sister -- 

“And _stay down_ ,” Ahsoka suddenly said. 

Padmé held her breath.

“No one can know we’re still alive,” Kenobi said.

“I know. You’re better at this than I am,” was Ahsoka’s reply.

“Don’t kill her,” Padmé said, and heard Leia mutter agreement.

“That is the farthest thing from our minds.” A pause, and then: “Oh no.”

“More problems?” Leia asked.

“She’s the advance party,” Ahsoka said. “ _He’s_ on his way.”

“ETA?” Padmé asked, through suddenly chattering teeth. 

“Let’s assume -- soon,” was Kenobi’s reply. “That shuttle is looking more and more like a getaway vehicle -- but for us.”

“So we’re not stealing this ship any more?” Luke asked on the commlink.

“And we have to look after Jyn. She is injured,” Jii-dan added.

A shadow fell over Padmé, then, and she looked up into the permanent glower of Sixth. “Time to get out.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Leia, guide them to our location,” Kenobi said.

“Waste of a trip,” Ahsoka said, quietly.

“Not quite. We know the Emperor has taken students of his own. We know that this is the ship that they were hoping to launch, if -- if Vader’s on his way.”

Padmé got to her feet and tried to hide the chill that settled in her bones at the mention of that name.

“It’s all right, Mama,” Leia said. “We’ll get out. But first: Luke.”

“Good thing you insisted on a backup plan.”

“Children,” Padmé began.

“We’ll explain,” Leia said.


	4. Chapter 4

Movement out of the corner of Padmé’s eye. She was so weary. Jyn lay on the hard cot and a series of displays threw ghostly green light onto her slack features. Bacta and bandages bound around Jyn’s head. Padmé nearly reached for her pistol -- but it was a familiar shape that trotted tentatively to her side. A familiar gold.

There was a stiffness in the way that See-Threepio held out the bowl in his hand. Chipped shallow dish, and it was full of some kind of green unidentifiable mush -- but it smelled like the best kind of meal that Padmé knew, like fish stew and spicy seasoned tubers, and it was all she could do to snatch the bowl and the utensil from the protocol droid. 

The mush was steaming hot and she burned her tongue within the first three mouthfuls -- she sucked air in through her teeth and kept eating, kept shoveling the food in. There was no one here to reprimand her for her manners. 

As far as Padmé knew, everyone else on _White Base_ was asleep -- and it was no wonder. The escape from Kuat -- she’d been trying to push it out of her mind -- 

She could still hear the voices that were jagged with fear.

A shuttle that was very nearly a field hospital, with Jyn limp in a bloodied Jii-dan’s arms. Kenobi and Ahsoka smelling like burnt clothes, like ozone, like fear-sweat. Dormé and Wedge at the controls because Luke was pale and sweaty and clinging blindly to his sister. Leia, herself, with singed sleeves and a slash of blood on her left shoulder. 

Behind them, collapsing in on itself, the now-derelict Imperial Star Destroyer. Decks separating from each other, and clouds of drifting debris. Sublight propulsion -- gone. Navigation systems -- destroyed. 

She remembered clenching her fists even as she paused in giving first aid to an impassive Sixth, who had nearly broken his leg in leaping into the shuttle. He had detoured from the others to head off the droidekas that had suddenly come alive in the shuttle bay -- he had very nearly come to blows with the Emperor’s Hand, who had seemingly shaken off whatever Kenobi and Ahsoka had done to her -- he was lucky to be alive, she’d thought then, and the thought came back to her now and she didn’t brush it away.

Incongruous freckles. A lithe dancer’s build. Hatred in emerald-green eyes. She couldn’t have been older than Padmé herself had been at her ascension to the throne of Naboo -- but this particular girl who was lit up with her fury and the cerise glare of her lightsaber was Padmé’s enemy, and worse.

The girl who had almost succeeded in bringing Darth Vader himself down upon their very heads.

A harsh clatter as Padmé dipped her utensil back into her bowl and it came up empty. She had finished the green mush, and she was still shivering now, her hunger half-sated and her fear still choking her, sensation of heavy invisible hands locked around her throat -- 

“Padmé.”

She very nearly cried out. She very nearly fell off the crate that she was sitting on. As it was, she dropped her bowl -- and she winced as it clanged off the cold grated floor.

“Oh, dear, dear,” Threepio said, and she didn’t do anything when he creaked as he came around to pick the bowl up.

“Sorry,” Dormé said as she crossed the threshold into their narrow cramped space of an infirmary. 

Padmé took a deep breath and fought hard to pull herself back together. “My fault. I was lost in my thoughts.”

“Of which there are many, almost all of them completely frightening.” Dormé allowed a still-tutting Threepio to sidle past her, and then dropped, almost heavily, onto another crate, one that had held some kind of green-skinned fruit and was permanently stained that vivid color. “I almost wonder if I’m not dreaming, because we shouldn’t have gotten out of there, and I wonder if we’re all really dead and just thinking we’re still alive.”

“We came too close to that edge, but I think we’re still alive,” was Padmé’s reply. “Because ghosts wouldn’t be in pain, and I burned my tongue on whatever it was that I was eating.”

“That I also have to apologize for. I know it was my turn on the cooking rotation. But given what we’ve just been through, I think I can be excused.”

“You are, but if Leia pouts at you later, I’m not coming to your rescue,” Padmé said.

When that made Dormé crack a brief, fleeting shadow of a smile, she was a little pleased.

Only a little. They had gone into an Imperial Star Destroyer and lived to tell the tale. They had escaped from beneath the long and heavy arm of the Empire once again. And that was only the beginning of all of their troubles.

“Do you think -- ” Dormé began.

Padmé shook her head, sharply. “If you want to talk about the Empire, I would ask you to stop. We will be talking about it again soon enough.”

“I wasn’t, actually,” was the quietly subdued response. “I was going to ask you about your children. Luke’s ability is something we’re all familiar with -- he’s practically the only thing keeping this rustbucket station together. And then we saw him kill a Star Destroyer with it. But Leia -- that talent that she demonstrated -- I could feel it. I felt her pushing me forward. Not like I was being forced to do anything against my will -- but she gave me clarity, she made me feel like I wasn’t tired -- ”

Padmé nodded, and explained what Leia had told her about battle meditation. 

At the end, Dormé looked grave. “Your daughter. She’s a weapon.”

“As were you. As was I. But Leia is in a class of her own. The Emperor would slaughter us all, if he knew what he would do. I know.” Padmé covered her face with her hands for a moment. “Not that he would not already be planning to do that, if he only knew who Leia really is, if he only knew who Luke’s father is. They would have been the first of the Emperor’s Hands had he managed to take them away. They would have been _all_ of the Emperor’s Hands, the only ones he would ever need.”

Dormé touched her knee, then, and Padmé seized her friend’s hand and held on. “You understood all of that the moment we knew that Vader was on the way.”

“It’s only the stuff of my nightmares, Dormé,” Padmé said. “But no. Truth is -- when I heard that Vader was on his way -- I nearly wet myself.”

“I suppose I might understand why -- ”

“I know what he was capable of, when he was still mostly human,” Padmé said, and she wanted to clench her jaw but she had to force the words out. “I don’t honestly know what he is now. I don’t want to know. But I have to think about it, every moment, every day, because of the children.”

A quiet noise as Jyn stirred on her cot. She did not wake.

“We got what we were looking for, though.” A subdued thread of hope in Dormé’s voice.

“Did we? They’ll move production of the Star Destroyers to some other place,” Padmé said. “And there’ll be changes to the designs.”

“But all the worlds will know that the Empire really is building weapons against them.”

“Would that the information was enough for them to consider breaking away. Would that the information was enough to give the Alliance more strength and more support. A handful of worlds could not possibly hope to demand reforms or some kind of change in the direction of democracy. We tried it with two thousand -- you know how well that turned out.”

“You can’t possibly be giving up.” 

Padmé sighed. “Believe what I say or not. I’m only human, Dormé. The thought of giving up and burying myself and the children on some backwater desolation of a planet crosses my mind every time I wake up from my nightmares. I don’t know why I don’t act on it.” She ran her hand through the tangled plaits in her hair. “I don’t know why I don’t act on it -- I just know that if I did it, if I let this tiny sliver of hope in me be crushed completely underneath the iron fist of the Empire -- then _he_ would have killed me in truth.

“And I’m not ready to die. Not yet.”

“Good to hear you say that,” said a new voice.

Padmé dredged up a smile, and beckoned to Dormé to sit next to her. Two crates jammed together, and the two of them sitting hip to hip, and now there was a little space for Ahsoka to squeeze in with them.

Ahsoka still smelled a little like lightsabers, and she was herself sporting bandages. But there was an undimmed light in her eyes. “What are we going to tell Mon Mothma, and Breha, and the others?”

“The blueprints and actual technical data will still be useful,” Padmé said, slowly at first. “But owing to the nature of our escape -- there will be changes to those specifications. On the other hand, the Empire has made a mistake in committing so much of its resources to these ships. They are still being built, and we will still be able to come up with counterattacks and counter-strategies. But now we will have to find the next set of shipyards.”

“And now we will have to wonder if they’re not planning to build something bigger, something more devastating,” Ahsoka said.

“That’s not very comforting,” Dormé said, sounding completely unsurprised.

“Visions,” was Ahsoka’s reply, short and succinct. “Kenobi concurs, by the way. The future is always in motion, I know. But I’d rather be prepared for whatever else may come.”

“More training for you, then,” Padmé said. “How soon before you’ll be leaving us?”

“I won’t.”

Padmé blinked.

“More training, yes, and not just for me. Your children. They’ll need other teachers. They’ll need to learn things that Kenobi might not be willing to teach them.” Ahsoka’s eyes had turned hard, now, as Padmé met her gaze. “I want your permission. They need to learn.”

And Padmé didn’t hesitate. “Granted.”

Silence. 

Padmé got up and pulled the thin blanket over Jyn’s shivering form.

“I can’t run from him forever,” she said, quietly, still standing over the other woman. “I know that’s impossible.”

“None of us can.” Ahsoka, sounding old and weary.

“But I’ll do anything to postpone that meeting. Anything to make sure that the Alliance gains enough power, enough truth, enough _right_ to challenge the Empire.” Padmé turned around, and squared her shoulders, and met Ahsoka’s eyes, and Dormé’s. “We know about Imperial Star Destroyers. We know about Emperor’s Hands. We know about battle meditation.”

“And there’ll be more things to know. More things to use in the fight,” Dormé said.

Ahsoka nodded, once, the tips of her lekku bouncing with the movement.

“So let’s recover, and let’s get to work,” Padmé said.


End file.
